Wolverton: Have we sunk to terrible depths?

Kip Richeal, an early colleague of mine, still calls himself a friend of Jerry Sandusky, though one wonders how that view might change.

Roughly a quarter-century ago, with Penn State coaching legend Joe Paterno still having half a career to go, Kip met Sandusky while working as an equipment manager for the football team. Like a lot of other people, many of them better known, Kip looked up to Sandusky, the man credited with turning Penn State into Linebacker U.

It turns out that Kip — whose physical stature is unimposing, the result of hip dysplasia — stands far taller than his friend ever did. After finishing as a finalist for a job that went to me, my first in the business, Kip moved quickly and quietly on, typical of him. Among other things, he authored books on Penn State football.

Those included one with the ultimately unfortunate title: “Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story.”

That left Kip fielding calls last week from reporters following the scandal generated by Sandusky’s arrest on 40 counts of sexually abusing eight young boys over a 15-year period. Sandusky denies it all. Naturally, Kip hopes the allegations aren’t true.

Reality frequently shatters hope like glass. Pray the noise this time awakens us.

Editors teach reporters not to convict suspects before the courts do, but if the allegations are true, Sandusky wanted a conviction long ago. He wanted to be stopped. Both the system and Paterno refused.

Twice, in 1998 and 2002, Sandusky was accused of assaulting boys. Twice, he walked.

In the first case, with police secretly listening, Sandusky confessed to a mother that he’d showered with her 11-year-old son and behaved wrongly. A district attorney who seven years later went missing, never to be found, decided not to prosecute for reasons as mysterious as his disappearance.

In the second case, an assistant coach said he witnessed Sandusky sodomizing a 10-year-old. The assistant did nothing to stop the crime, waiting until the following day to tell Paterno, who in turn told a superior, one of two who now face perjury charges in the case.

Paterno legally did as he was obliged, meaning he passed on the information. But legal and moral obligations differ. Paterno would figure to know this.

For almost 46 years as coach until his firing Wednesday, he preached a rectitude that he came to symbolize, espousing maxims such as “Success with honor and integrity.”

That legacy turned to ashes with Paterno holding the match. Why didn’t he inform police? Why didn’t he do more?

Perhaps because he could not face then what the scandal means now: not only the end of a career, but the dismantling of an illusion he’d manufactured and an identity he cherished.

He was lost in both, so much so that hours before his firing, Paterno announced his plan to finish the season, saying school trustees “should not spend a single minute discussing my status.” Unbridled power at Penn State made him like a newborn; it stripped him of sentience. How else could he be so unaware?

If the charges are true, Sandusky is exposed as a cretin, a boil on the flesh of humanity. But Paterno already is exposed as a megalomaniacal farce, a small man who so coveted his large life that he would not surrender it even if keeping it risked young boys being exposed to a predator.

On campus and off, Paterno has defenders, which is understandable among people who know him, such as current and former players, people who have seen the better side of him. But others are part of a problem that extends beyond him and envelops him, and if we look with eyes wide open, we can see now the awful danger in it.

We’ve made gods of men who play and coach games. We’ve turned the simple act of a winning drive into a feat of heroism. It’s nothing of the kind. We revere men whose only real greatness is knowing whether to run or punt.

Those men, men like Paterno, are exalted, and they crave that like a thirsty man does water. They can’t live without it. And they can’t risk losing it for the sake of a few small boys.

They stand on pedestals we’ve crafted. We do not create monsters this way, but we empower them.

Those who say this scandal is larger than Paterno are correct. It reveals a society in the wilderness with no compass. Horrors unspeakable unfold in such a place.

Lee Wolverton is executive editor of the Globe-News. His email address is lee.wolverton@ amarillo.com.

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When I saw the headline, "Have we sunk to terrible depths?", I thought Mr. Wolverton was going to confess the central role he and Mr. Simpson have played in the downtown development charade and beg our forgivenesss. Instead, he joined all the other posturing pundits throwing stones at a defenseless target. Brave, Lee, really brave.

Mr. Wolverton has very effectively placed this event in the proper context. I am impressed with his ability to express the underlying rot in this whole horrible situation. Innocent children should deserve more of society's attention and concern than a winning football coach and program.